"Tired of Your Nonsense"
On this particular day he was being extra whiny and cranky so I started mimicking him to get a smile out of him. I tickled him, poked him, made silly voices. To no avail. Instead he crossed his arms, furrowed his brow and said- "Stop trying to make me laugh!" Determined to stay cranky. We've literally all done this before. I know I have. Sometimes you just want to be in a bad mood. Of course being the good mom I am, I mimic him again, crossed arms and all. (I swear i stopped maturing about the age of 12.)
Y'all this kid gets the most serious look on his face, looks me square in the eyes and says with stone cold conviction-
"I'm tired of your nonsense."
Now, normally those would be fighting words and that kid would not have seen the light of day for the rest of the evening. Instead, I remembered what I had told my 8 year old daughter just hours before.
"Everyone just needs a little extra grace right now."
Now listen, I am no Ghandi. I am the last person who generally extends any leniency. I have unreachable standards when it comes to myself and most of my relationships in life and it is something I am working on (I promise.) However, right now I just think that none of us are really ourselves. Right?
There is no handbook for this crazy time. You can't call your people who have been through this before for advice because those people don't exist. This is new for everyone. Even 4 year olds.
I heard a Ted talk today dealing with this. The speaker basically said we need to cut ourselves some slack especially now. That our biggest problem is our emotions about our emotions. We feel guilt or shame about feeling frustrated or anxious. We know there are people out there that have it worse than we do so we have shame for feeling sorry for ourselves or complaining. We feel frustrated that we aren't able to help in a more impactful way. Guilt that we dont have the patience for homeschooling, or the motivation to workout or organize and make the most of this weird time. For now, just come to terms that this is totally normal! Essentially, give yourself some grace as well.
Now I'm not guaranteeing I will always have this outlook. I can't even guarantee I will give grace tomorrow, but for now I chose to let him off the hook and just laughed. He looked up at me, smiled and said- "See, I was just trying to make YOU laugh." I gave him a bop on the forehead, then we ate our weight in banana pudding.
Hang in there friends.
p.s- never underestimate the power of banana pudding